So Rock Band 1 from Harmonix was in release limbo in this country for about a year due to (as I understand it) issues with getting rights to music. Then Activision releases Guitar Hero: World Tour and suddenly it’s not so difficult to release Rock Band. Meanwhile the rest of the world is getting Rock Band 2 already, complete with hardware revisions.

JuJu says to himself: “Self, it’s not really worth getting the original RB controllers cos they are suck compared to v.2.0, so you’d better get yourself GH:WT and wait for next gen” So I did.

A year later and Rock Band 2 still hasn’t been released on our shores. But the Beatles: Rock Band has, complete with remodelled RB2 hardware.

So I snap it up and… welly well well! Definitely worth the purchase, I think despite the lack of cymbals the method to charting drumlines in RB is quite a bit better than GH. Since three of the pads register as both drum and cymbal the full virtual kit technically features four drums and three cymbals. Colour me foolish to believe that three drums and two cymbals was ever an improvement. There is some awkwardness in the ambiguity between the nature of what you’re hitting, but not enough to be a massive problem.

Next payday I’m totally importing the RB2 disc.

Also on the wishlist: those Mad Catz plug in cymbals. Niiice.

Something that hasn’t quite come across here yet is my gaming life. I have a strange relationship with gaming. Whereas I find it difficult to jump into an ongoing comic mid way through a storyline, or read a series of books without recently having read the entire backstory in sequence, I have no such qualms about playing snippets of games and leaving them unfinished.

I never was what I would consider good at games. I enjoy them, but I never was good at them. Oh, I’m better at many games than many other people, I’m sure, but that’s just a product of hours spent playing games. I actually do believe I have little natural talent for gaming. What attracts me to many games is the story, truth be told, which is a theme for my life really. I also find plays with consciously impenetrable narratives difficult to maintain interest in. But the possibility of many and varied types of stories returns me to games in the way that some people return to film, or music, or books. I am compelled to play if only to see what happens next.

Likewise, a dry and boring story in a game leaves something to be desired for me, no matter how fun the gameplay. On the other hand the games that have a great story I will give a second playthrough if the gameplay isn’t too arduous.

But the main strangeness of my relationship with gaming is how I obscure it from the rest of my life. I don’t mention that a good percentage of my budget seems to fall down a gaming memory hole. I don’t mention that any off hours I get (and a few I can’t afford) are spent playing games. It’s not a point of pride how many points are on my XBOX gamer card. It’s a segment of my life that is hermetically sealed away from everything else I do. Even amongst people who would appreciate and share with me the highs and lows of the hobby.

I’m not quite sure why. In this day and age, where a console of some type is in many living rooms in Australia, why should I hide the fact that I own three gaming systems (and have, in the past, owned four)? Why should I worry what people think about my constant upgrades to my PC to keep up to date with the latest in gaming technology? All I know is that it’s been a segmented part of me for so long that to bring it out seems… well, perverse.

One of the aspects of theatre that makes it a worthwhile endeavour (and sometimes a frustrating one) in this age of film and television is its ephemeral nature. This is true in terms of both a season of a play and any particular performance during that season. Whereas when you watch a film you are essentially guaranteed the same sound and vision as any other viewing of that film, theatre has a life to breathe and adjust within the occasionally lax constraints of the direction and two shows in a season can be quite markedly different to one another for various reasons.

With luck a show evolves as feedback is garnered from audiences and evolution leads to improvements.

So it is with “In a Dark, Dark, House”. As predicted, the actors have become more comfortable with their text and in their characters over the past week and the result is a fairly dramatically different rendition of the performance than what was seen on opening night. Red Stitch is blessed to be able to fine-tune a production over a season of five weeks. However, changes can occur amazingly rapidly at times. A slight variation in the mood of the actors, or indeed in the mood of the audience, can have a snowball effect that takes the show in new and exciting directions. Night-to-night, the show evolves.

Unfortunately, the nature of the industry is that the opening night can have the biggest impact on the season of the show of any performance. It’s when the reviewers come, and if it happens to be slightly under-ripe, the result is sour press. When a film is reviewed, it is the same film that everyone will be able to see. Theatre, on the other hand, is often reviewed on the merits of a performance that doesn’t reflect the best rendition of the season.

But that’s tangential to the point. Theatre is exciting and raw and constantly changing. That’s why I love it, and why to me film is a less attractive prospect.